


she'll open up the door (and say, are you insane?)

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, F/M, Getting Back Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 02:58:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8311246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: Jemma doesn't miss him.  Not at all.  Or at least not in any of the ways she expected.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a belated birthday present for jemmasimmuns on Tumblr.
> 
> Title from Taylor Swift's "How You Get the Girl".

_14 months before the breakup_  
“So, er, this is me.” Jemma shifted from foot to foot, illuminated by the streetlights above them. Fitz thought that it was unfair that anyone could look that good after being soaked through to the skin. For example, right now, he had the sinking feeling that he looked like an absolute idiot in front of the girl he'd been slightly in love with for the past five months. He'd finally worked up the courage to ask her out and it had all been good—dinner, ice cream, a walk through the park—until the skies had opened up and the rain had started pouring down.

“Right then. I'll just be--” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the bus stop but didn't move.

“I—I had a really nice time tonight, Fitz.” She glanced down at the ground, her cheeks a distinct shade of pink, and Fitz felt a stubborn burst of hope surge in his chest. “Rain and everything.”

“I did too. I really like you, Jemma,” he blurted out. “Might be illegal, how much I like you really. But I do. And I...I want this. Us. More than I want anything else.” 

Fitz took a deep breath, paused, and tried to think of something else to say as she stared at him with bright eyes and a flushed face. But for the first time in his life, he was speechless.

So he kissed her instead.

 _The day after the breakup_  
Jemma Simmons was just fine, thank you for asking. As a matter of fact, she had never been better in her life. After nearly a year of constant aggravation and arguing, she had finally ended her relationship with the most annoying Scotsman she had ever had the displeasure of meeting. She woke up precisely at seven am to the chiming of her alarm clock, without Fitz whining and asking her to stay in bed for just ten minutes or planting sleepy kisses to the back of her neck, went into her perfectly clean kitchen, now free of jars of peanut butter, half-eaten packages of Oreos cluttering up her counters, or Fitz trying to convince her to try the nutritionally dubious combination of the two. And as she brewed a cup of tea—proper English breakfast, none of the relaxing detox teas Fitz had always pestered her to try—she thought that this was perfect happiness. 

Besides, of course, the things she'd thrown across the room. She'd have to do something about those.

_Eleven months before the breakup_  
“You left something at my house last night,” he informed her casually over breakfast. Her favorite cozy cardigan, draped over the back of a chair like it belonged there. Fitz had probably assigned it more significance than it deserved but it had taken him a month and a half to talk her into staying the whole night and almost three months to convince her that no, her leaving a toothbrush in his bathroom wouldn't be a sign that he was about to get down on one knee and propose. 

“I did not!” Jemma said and speared a piece of pancake with significantly more force than she needed to. “I don't leave things around boys' houses like—like some kind of modern-day Cinderella.”

“Are you sure? Because I think it means that you like me. You want me to go searching throughout the land for the fair maiden whose shoulders will fit the cardigan. I'm going to start on Brooklyn as soon as I'm finished with my breakfast”

Jemma laughed and reached under the table to squeeze his hand in hers and just maybe, the cardigan was exactly as significant as he thought it was. Maybe she was going to stay.

 

_A day and a half after the breakup_  
Voice mail left at 11:33 pm: “Leopold Fitz, if you think I care about the t-shirt you think you may have left at my house, you are sadly mistaken. It's probably faded, frayed, and not worth preserving anyway because you wouldn't know a nice shirt if it crawled out of the abyss of your closet and tried to strangle you.”

Voice mail left at 1:47am: “First of all, I bloody well know it's there. Second of all, if you'd left anything at my house, you'd be here right now banging on my door and demanding it. But you don't leave anything behind you, do you, Simmons?”

 

_Ten months before the breakup_  
Jemma claimed that it had been too soon to introduce him to her family. Fitz claimed that they had been determined to dislike him from the moment he had walked in the door. He'd seen the way her grandmother's mouth pursed when she heard his Scottish accent, or the glances her sisters had exchanged when he talked about growing up with a single mother, or the raised eyebrow he'd received from her father when he'd explained that actually, he worked for himself. It didn't matter that he was doing quite well on his own, better than he would have if he'd stayed with Hammer Industries, or that his mother had been the one to let him build structures in their backyard and fought fiercely for him to get a scholarship to the local grammar school and practically pushed him out the door when he'd been accepted to Cambridge and worried about leaving her.

He hadn't grown up with horses or learned the correct way to use a salad fork or vacationed in the Maldives and clearly, those were the important things.

“You're not being fair to them,” Jemma said fiercely in the car afterward. “They get defensive around new people. And you weren't exactly helping the situation, with all those stories about rummaging around in the junkyard for spare parts because your mother was off working a double shift at the hospital.”

“They're true. What was I supposed to do, pretend that I spent my childhood at some posh boarding school? They were never going to like me, Jem,” he snapped. “Just accept it.”

They argued about it for the rest of the ride home and through him dropping her off at her brownstone. She slammed the car door as hard as she could when she got out. He spent the night pacing his apartment and wondering what exactly he had said wrong. Yes, he had been a bit heavy on the stories of his wayward childhood, but only after they'd gone all snobby. And yes, maybe he shouldn't have exaggerated the accent but—Fitz groaned and sank down on the couch. It had been his fault too. 

In the morning, he showed up with bagels and cream cheese. She didn't let him finish apologizing before she started apologizing too. They spent the morning curled around each other on the couch and Fitz was determined to be charming the next time he saw her family. 

(He wasn't.)

 

 _Three days after the breakup_  
“And you're okay?” Daisy asked carefully. “You don't want to talk about it?”

“Why on earth would I want to talk about it?” Jemma said and reached for her glass of wine. They were out at one of their favorite bars but she was beginning to think that they should have tried someplace new. Because, unfortunately, she and Fitz had used to come here with Daisy and Trip and Bobbi and Hunter all the time. Hanging over in that corner was the dart board where they'd competed for hours and hours and there was the beer on draft that he insisted on ordering every single time because it was the cheapest thing on the menu and there was the corner booth where they'd gone on their disastrous first date. She could practically picture his smug face hovering in the air, asking her why they couldn't order the cheese fries.

“Fitz and I were always going to break up,” Jemma added and swallowed half her wine in one gulp. “We couldn't go more than a week without arguing, he brought chaos and disorder into my life, and my grandmother didn't like him at all.”

“You know, you're allowed to be sad about it. You were together for more than a year,” Bobbi tried in her best big-sister voice. When Jemma had told Bobbi and Daisy about the breakup, they had come over armed with ice cream and wine and a selection of bad movies, ready to console her. But she didn't need ice cream or wine or to see Notting Hill for the twenty-third time. She was better off without Fitz. And right now, she was going to reclaim this bar for herself. 

“I already told you that I was fine,” Jemma said firmly. “Now, who wants to order cheese fries?”

_Eight months before the breakup_  
These were the things Fitz loved about her.  
1\. Her (beautiful, brilliant, impossible) mind.  
2\. Her hair, spread out across his sheets in the morning.  
3\. The way she danced in her chair whenever she got a good Scrabble score.  
4\. The way she stole all the blankets at night.  
5\. The look of concentration in her eyes as she looked over a new case.  
6\. Her breath, catching in her throat whenever he kissed the back of her neck.  
7\. Her no-nonsense stare.  
8\. The careful way she stirred her tea in the morning.  
9\. Her face when she looked at the stars.  
10\. The look in her eyes when she thought he wasn't looking.

_A week after the breakup_  
These were all the things she wasn't going to miss about Fitz,  
1\. His plaid shirts taking up space in her closet.  
2\. The little smirk he gave her whenever he knew he was right.  
3\. The obscene amounts of sugar he put in his tea.  
4\. His insistence on bringing snacks everywhere he went.  
5\. The stupid little nicknames he gave all her appliances.  
6\. The Scotch he always ordered when they went out to a nice restaurant and then never finished.  
7\. The way he exaggerated his Scottish accent around her parents.  
8\. The way his shoulders would slump when she got back late or canceled on him.  
9\. His sharp voice whenever they argued  
10\. The look in his eyes when he walked away.

_Seven months before the breakup_  
“I can't believe you've never seen Star Wars. Wait right here,” he said and sprang up from the couch. “I've got the whole set on DVD. We're going to watch it from the beginning.”

He counted it as a triumph when she finally admitted that she liked Princess Leia and Han Solo.

 

_Two weeks after the breakup_  
Jemma went to see the latest Star Wars film with Bobbi. She'd bought tickets in advance to surprise Fitz and well...Bobbi made for a better movie going companion anyway. Fitz would have insisted on going in some elaborate couples costume.

_Five months before the breakup_  
Jemma never liked any of the presents he bought her. The books she'd already read, the framed periodic table of the elements she already had (a present from a previous boyfriend, he suspected), and the sweater she never wore. She got the flu when they had dinner reservations and was horrified at the thought of spending a week in Bermuda together.

But this time, he had found the perfect Christmas present. He made it months in advance in case his time got consumed by other projects, wrapped it as best he could, and hid it in her apartment. Jemma never looked in the back of her closet until New Year's but she was always urging him to clean out his closets and cupboards and all the various nooks that he shoved things in until he forgot about them. If he hid it in his apartment, she'd find it and probably open it without even asking first. If he hid it in her apartment, she'd never even see it. 

_A month after the breakup_  
She was clearing out her closet for the New Year when she found it, shoved deep behind her coats and mismatched pairs of rain boots. After one Christmas Eve where she'd gone to three different stores to find the perfect sarcastic mug for Daisy and nearly been kicked out of Macy's trying to decide between three different teapots for her younger sister, she'd gotten into the habit of buying presents far in advance. Usually online, since her job didn't leave her much time for shopping anymore. She'd already returned the Christmas presents she'd bought for Fitz, although she couldn't help feeling a slight twinge of regret that he'd never know how truly superb this year's present crop had been. (Their first Christmas, they'd only just started dating so she'd simply gotten him a few carefully chosen paperback books. She'd been quite looking forward to bowling him over with her present giving skills.) Fitz, however, had been distinctly less organized, which explained why a small squashed box with her name on it had been lurking in the back of her closet. 

Opening it would be a terrible idea. What she should do, what any sane and logical person would do, would be to send a quick email to Fitz, explain that she'd found something that belonged to him in her apartment, and offer to mail it over to him. Only that would require that she actually talk to Fitz and considering that their last words to each other had been screamed, that sounded like a rather spectacularly terrible idea. On the spectrum of terrible ideas, in fact, it fell somewhere between her fifth grade science project and the time in college Daisy had suggested they try to sneak backstage at a Justin Timberlake concert. 

So she carefully placed the box back in the deepest recesses of her closet and tried to forget about it.

_Three months before the breakup_  
Their arguments always used to end the same way. An apology a few hours later, or the morning after at the very latest. A peace offering from one or both of them. A long night or morning or, in the early days, afternoon spent in bed.

Now, they lasted longer. They were nastier, going straight to the heart of the things they used to dance around. But even when he was arguing with her, even when he stormed out of her apartment or refused to take her calls, Fitz thought that he had never felt more alive.

_A month and a half after the breakup_  
Jemma went out on a date with someone Daisy and Trip suggested. Dinner at an Italian place downtown that made their own pasta, a very nice man with a handsome smile and shoulders that strained at the seams of his coat, red wine...she was bored by the time they got to the main course.

When she said that she'd always wanted to go to Italy, he'd told an entertaining story about his time in Venice and concurred that it was a beautiful country. When she'd talked about the importance of scientific accountability, he'd agreed enthusiastically and they'd had a lively discussion on a controversial recent study. And when she'd mentioned that the Tenth Doctor was her favorite, he'd wondered how anyone could think otherwise. It had been terrible.

“He agreed with everything I said,” she told Daisy afterward. “If I'd wanted to spend an evening talking to myself, I could have stayed at home, stared at my mirror, and worn yoga pants for the entire evening.”

“So you want a guy who's going to argue with you. Like Fitz.”

“Of course not! I'd like my next relationship to not involve pointless debates on who the best Batman was,” Jemma said haughtily. It had dominated their relationship for the better part of a week. “I just don't want some kind of...milequetoast who's going to think I'm always right.”

(Even if she was.)

The next week, Trip and Daisy tried to set her up with another friend of theirs and she politely declined. She'd thought that the only thing she'd wanted out of her next relationship was someone who wasn't Fitz. Perhaps she required a little more than that.

_Two months before the breakup_  
“So do you think they're really going to go through with it this time?” Jemma whispered, tipping her head up toward Fitz's. They were at Bobbi and Hunter's engagement party and nothing had gone up in flames, exploded, or been broken. Yet.

“You know, I really think they will. They—they seem really happy.” Fitz had known Hunter for years now and while he and Bobbi had been breaking up and getting back together for years now, something about this time seemed settled. Grown up.

Jemma sighed a little wistfully beside him, watching Bobbi and Hunter at the center of the dance floor, and Fitz slipped his arm around her shoulders to pull her close. 

He'd seen a ring at Tiffany's a week ago that Jemma would have loved. A sapphire, with a small diamond on either side. It was a stupid idea, he knew that. Except for times like now, when Jemma was leaning against his side and smiling softly up at him, when they'd managed to stop fighting and everything was easy as breathing, when he thought that all he wanted was to see her smile at him for the rest of his life. 

_Four months after the breakup_  
She couldn't believe that Bobbi and Hunter had actually invited Fitz to their wedding. Admittedly, she couldn't believe that Bobbi and Hunter were actually getting married. They'd nearly broken up at least three times since getting engaged and Jemma had been fairly sure that one of them would murder the other while they were trying to plan the wedding menu. Yet here they were, Bobbi radiant in white and Hunter looking surprisingly dapper in his suit, staring at each other at the front of the church like there was no one else in the world and grinning madly as the reverend pronounced them husband and wife. It made something clench tight in Jemma's chest as she watched them from the front pew.

And there was Fitz, sitting in the opposite pew from her. He hadn't even bothered to cut his hair or buy a new suit for the occasion. (Hardly a surprise.) Jemma fixed her eyes firmly on Bobbi and Hunter as they exchanged their vows and tried her best to not acknowledge his presence. As far as she was concerned, Fitz was just a piece of furniture. A particularly rickety and unreliable piece of furniture that no one should ever sit on. 

“You know, there's still time for something to go wrong. Great Aunt Cecilia could go rogue,” a voice said from behind her at the reception. Jemma knew who it was before she even turned around. They had been both standing on the side lines of the dance floor and maintaining a perfectly respectable distance from each other. Jemma couldn't fathom what had led him to break it. (Probably the drink he was clutching in his hand.) He was rocking back and forth from foot to foot and tugging at the lines of his suit—a nervous habit she'd always tried to get him to break—but Fitz was never nervous around her, was he? Not since the earliest days of their relationship, when him asking her out to dinner had involved an elaborate amount of verbal gymnastics and a steadfast refusal to meet her eyes. 

“Actually, my money's on Uncle Scott,” Jemma finally said, keeping her eyes firmly focused on the dance floor. She could offer this up, couldn't she? A sort of belated peace treaty after months of war.

Fitz smiled, just a little. Then they went back to ignoring each other for the remainder of the wedding, before either of them could ruin it. 

_Three weeks before the breakup_  
Jemma told him that she was here, curled up with him on his couch and promising brunch and the movies. Then her phone rang and she was out the door before he could say anything, promising her boss that she would be in as soon as possible and zipping up her pencil skirt with one hand while she felt around for her heels with the other.

Fitz missed her already.

_Five months after the breakup_  
She never missed Fitz in any of the ways she expected. Not at the first family dinner that she had to sit through without him cracking jokes in her ear, not the first time she had to play fifth wheel to Daisy and Trip and Bobbi and Hunter, not the first time tossing and turning alone in the middle of the night.

She missed him when she walked by the crappy diner downtown that he always insisted on going to after they went to the movies. And the thing was, she'd hated the diner. She'd hated the cracked red leather booths and the grumpy waitresses and the tea that arrived in the form of a mug of hot water and a cheap tea bag. She missed him whenever she saw a trailer for the latest James Bond movie with its inevitable love interest who died in the first half of the movie to motivate Bond (“I could make anything that Q can, Jemma, it's fairly simple engineering”) or when she went into the toy store they'd nearly been banned from to buy a present for her niece. (Fitz had tried to alter one of their remote controlled toys and been given a stern talking-to by the manager. They'd had a massive argument that night about it.)

She'd never expected to miss the bad parts but there it was. Even when it had been bad—and, near the end, it had been bad so very often—Fitz had made her feel alive. He'd been the snap of electricity in her bones, the anchor holding her firmly in the present when her mind wanted to skitter ahead to all the things she was planning or back to all the ways she had gone wrong. He'd made her come home from work at six rather than eight or nine and go to the beach on weekends and try the new Korean place around the corner even though he hated kimchi.

With him, life had been exciting. But safe and stable was better. Nine to five, two sugars and a splash of milk, the crisp lines of her black suits hanging in the cupboard, the kale salad she always ordered at lunch...That was better. Predictable. Unlikely to wreak any kind of havoc with her heart.

_One week before the breakup_  
He knew it was going to happen before it did. The writing was there, scratched out in ten-foot-high letters on the brick wall outside her apartment where they fought until their throats were hoarse, tucked into the corners and folds of the bag of his things that she told him she'd found in her spare room, carved into the surface of the restaurant they tried to go for dinner, woven into the sound of the ring tone that always called her away and made him sulk more than he should have.

But he was stupid. Or hopeful. Or both.

 

_Six months after the breakup_  
Jemma saw him in a bar. Talking to a girl. Not very successfully, if the bored way she was glancing around was any indication. But still...how dare that girl look bored? Jemma was sorely tempted to be indignant on his behalf. Fitz was an excellent conversationalist, if a somewhat combative one. 

He called her later that night. She'd picked up without checking the number and froze when she heard his voice on the other end of the line, soft and slurred like it always got when he'd had too much to drink. 

“Hey, Jem. You probably can't even hear this, can you? Voicemail too full up because your bastard of a boss thinks he can call you at any hour of the night. An' you'll probably delete this as soon as you get the chance. Anyway...hi, Jem. I miss you. Some days I can't decide if I miss you or I'm mad at you more. But that means you should take me back so we can just be mad at each other. And then we'll make up and then we'll fix it Why did we let us get screwed up? Do you know, because I don't and you always seemed to know everything. Or at least you like to think that you know everything.” He sighed, heavy and thick, and the sound seemed to echo on her end of the phone. “You gave us an expiration date before we even started, didn't you? Eight, nine months, maybe a year if I was really good. I never got a chance to prove that I could be something more than temporary and god, Jemma, I wanted to. I wanted to--”

She ended the call before he could say anything else.

_The day of the breakup_  
This was the reason he left  
1\. So she wouldn't leave first.

_Six and a half months after the breakup_  
These were the reasons they broke up.

1\. Her job.  
2\. His lack of a steady one.  
3\. Her family—not welcoming enough.  
4\. His family—entirely too welcoming.  
5\. The arguments they had at night.  
6\. The way they felt in the morning.  
7\. Wrong time.  
8\. Wrong place.

These were the reasons that they should have stayed together.

1\. He loved her.  
2\. She loved him.  
3\. Just maybe, he might have been the one.

_Six and a half months after the breakup_  
This was the reason he shouldn't have left.  
1\. Because he would never love anyone like the way he loved Jemma Simmons.

 

 _Seven months after the breakup_  
Fitz appeared on her doorstep a little after nine o'clock at night, standing there in the pouring rain without an umbrella and with a massive bouquet of peonies. (He had always been the dramatic one in their relationship.)

“I miss you,” he said when she finally opened the door.

“Fitz, it's been seven months.” What she didn't say was that she'd missed him too.

“Exactly. It's been seven months and I still miss you.”

Her heart stuttered, just a little. 

“I know we broke up for a reason. And they were probably good reasons and real reasons but I—you're the most real thing there is. You're color when everything else is black and white. Jemma,” he said when she stayed silent, wide-eyed and pale in the doorway. “Please say something. Take the flowers, at least. Or don't take them. Kick me out into the street. But please do something.”

“I—I couldn't stop thinking about you either,” she said slowly. Jemma took a deep breath, paused, and tried to think of something else to say as he stared at her with bright eyes and a flushed face. But for the second time in her life, she was speechless.

So she kissed him instead.


End file.
